The question we are answering is: How does culture influence identity development? By the end of this article you will be able to conclude that no matter what the surrounding environment of an individual will have some sort of effect on the physical or mental aspects of an individual. To answer this question we need to understand how identity develops, what culture consists of, and conclude how culture influences identity development. First, to know what motivates identity development we must understand how identity develops. Identity development begins with children's self-discovery, which continues throughout childhood and becomes the focus of adolescence. According to Erik Erikson, the goal of adolescence is to achieve a coherent identity and avoid identity confusion. Identity is made up of many aspects; physical and sexual identity, beliefs, ethnic origin and much more. Adolescence explores these aspects of identity as they enter early adulthood, although sometimes there are things that influence change in these aspects of their identity as life conditions and situations change. Identity development begins with children's awareness and belief that they are unique individuals and not exactly the same as their friends. This alertness is evident when children begin to recognize themselves. For example, one research experiment that took place to support this idea was when researchers placed a red dot on a child's nose, two-year-olds who saw themselves in the mirror touched their noses (Bullock and Lutkenhaus 1990 ), this shows that they recognize themselves in a mirror image. Furthermore, "I" and "I" and "My" are pronounced very early in children's speech showing a sense of... middle of paper... It allows adolescents to speak freely and reveal the desired personality that may not be not true at all. Some teenagers do not realize that what they say does not respect privacy and that their online profiles create a particular perception of them, they rarely think about their consequences, these consequences do not necessarily have to be external factors, these consequences can have a drastic influence about themselves. These social networking sites hinder the identity development of adolescents, as they allow adolescents to overdo it and when the adolescent does so, this creates pressure for the adolescent to form a new identity and forces him to find a balance between his desired true nature and personality, simply altering who they are to suit who they want to be, could have positive or negative influences on identity development.